


The genetic predisposition to love

by AirgiodSLV



Category: Bandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-05
Updated: 2007-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“This can’t be happening,” Spencer says.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The genetic predisposition to love

**Author's Note:**

> Future-fic AU. Thanks to [](http://adellyna.livejournal.com/profile)[**adellyna**](http://adellyna.livejournal.com/) for the beta.

“I love you,” Jon says.

It takes a moment to settle in, but once it does there’s a tingle all the way through his body, a low hum like a thousand fireflies surrounding his rib cage, and Spencer has been robbed of most of his intellect and powers of speech, unable to say anything more than, “What?”

To his credit, Jon isn’t discouraged by Spencer’s lack of enthusiasm and reciprocation. “I love you,” he says again, patient but urgent, eyes the most sincere brown Spencer could ever imagine seeing outside of a puppy back on earth. “I want to be with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to make you breakfast in bed and sing to you in the shower and apologize when you trip over my shoes in the hallway and swear. I want all of that.”

Jon has a tendency to shed footwear as soon as is humanly possible, which is something Spencer doesn’t really mind, but he does stub his toes an awful lot when Jon leaves them lying around on the floor, which is why… Wait, what? “What are you…?”

“Commit to me,” Jon says. He’s not pleading, he’s asking, although it feels like there is very little room for argument, at least as far as Spencer is concerned. “I want to spend my life with you.”

The fact that they’re doing this over English muffins in the station’s cafeteria is somehow entirely unimportant. When you live on a space station, you don’t get a lot of privacy, and Spencer has never needed rose petals or bubble bath for romance. Chocolates are nice, though. He likes chocolates.

Still, the point is that it’s as romantic as if Jon had asked him this same question in the observatory under the stars, on one knee with a pledge-ring in a velvet-lined box. The fact that it’s Jon who’s asking is the only thing that matters.

Spencer says, “Yes.”

*

There are formalities they have to go through, of course, paperwork to file and requests to be made, and neither of them have been tagged. Sexuality tagging is something Spencer privately feels to be ridiculous, because even with his healthy respect for science and understanding the human brain, getting a piece of paper that tells you you really are attracted to the person you want to spend the rest of your life with seems rather inane.

Jon just makes their appointments with the same laidback, unruffled attitude he extends to most situations, and hands Spencer a reminder card telling him to be at the lab on Tuesday. “Try not to stare too much at all the boobs,” Jon tells him with a little grin that Spencer finds both adorable and sexy as hell. “Remember that I have better hips.”

Spencer can’t disagree with that. He takes the appointment card and steals a kiss.

*

The sexuality tagging process starts off tame, faces and bodies, holographic portraits of men and women alike in artfully appealing positions, some with clothes and some without, and proceeds from there. After ten minutes or so it’s become more pornographic, the women seductive and coy, the men muscled and gleaming. Spencer finds it unsettling, but he thinks of how overwhelmed Jon must be by the whole thing, and that makes him smile through the next five minutes of bare breasts and erect cocks.

By the time the actual porn starts, images of men and women, men and men, women and women entwined together in every possible permutation, hands on cocks and fingers in cunts and backs arched in ecstasy, Spencer is so turned on he forgets what he’s supposed to be responding to and what he’s not, but he figures they’ll cut him some slack at this point and tries not to feel too uncomfortable by the way his brainwaves are being monitored throughout all of this and his cock is pressing insistently against his pants, uncomprehending that this is all just a scientific evaluation.

He tries to remind it that if it behaves and they pass this, it gets to have Jon, as often as it wants, but it’s more interested in the here and now and the three-dimensional movie of a young guy arching under the spray of his beefy companion’s come. Spencer bites his lip and squirms just a little.

It’s over in the allotted forty-five minutes, although it feels much, much longer, and Spencer is weak-kneed with relief when they open the door to the cubicle and detach the electrodes. The guy wiping sticky-gum from his temples is smirking, just a little, but it doesn’t seem mean-spirited, and Spencer can grudgingly acknowledge that if the positions were reversed and he was removing medical equipment from some guy sporting a hard-on and sweating, it might be kind of funny.

“Your results will be mailed within 7-10 days,” the receptionist tells him with a bright smile, and Spencer thanks her and goes home to take a cold shower.

*

“I got my card today,” Jon says over the com-link as Spencer writes out sample labels, the end of his shift winding down with that peculiar laziness that late afternoons always seem to have. “Pink as the Madonna’s rosy nipples.”

“Don’t talk about women’s nipples, you might jinx it,” Spencer laughs, scribbling down another set of letters and numbers and affixing the label to a waiting vial. Jon’s answering laugh is warm and light in his ear, turning his cheeks warm to hear it.

“Did you get yours yet?” Jon asks, and the casual quality of his voice makes Spencer think about those holographs he had to watch for the tagging, with Jon as a substitute, his hand and his thighs and his cock. It doesn’t matter that he’s never seen Jon naked, and can’t until they get this part over with. He’s always had a good imagination.

“I haven’t been home, working since eight,” Spencer tells him, but the fact that Jon got his today means Spencer probably has as well, waiting at home with the rest of his mail.

“Call me when you get home, we’ll go out and celebrate,” Jon says, and the fact that there’s only one or two places they can actually go on this station doesn’t matter at all. “It’s only a matter of time now, we can start counting the days.”

“You’d better start planning what to make me for breakfast in bed,” Spencer tells him, and grins when Jon laughs.

*

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Ryan asks, after patiently waiting for five minutes while Spencer stares at the government-imprinted envelope and sweats. Ryan is here for support, and because he’s been Spencer’s best friend for most of their lives. Spencer had called him on the way over, and he hadn’t even gotten around to actually requesting Ryan’s presence for the somewhat momentous occasion before Ryan had said, “I’ll be right over,” leaving Spencer weak with relief.

Spencer holds onto the envelope for another minute or so before Ryan holds out his hand. Spencer passes the envelope wordlessly and hides behind his hands. It’s not that he doubts the results, it’s just a pretty huge deal, and anything is possible, and okay, he’s a little nervous.

Ryan rips open the envelope and all Spencer hears for a long time is silence. He peeks out from behind his fingers when the suspense becomes too much, expecting Ryan to be playing around with him. “What?” Spencer asks, tense with nerves. His shoulders hurt and he hates the legal aspect of committing and he really just wants Jon. “Just tell me, Ryan, for God’s sake.”

Ryan drops the slip of paper onto the table in front of him and Spencer hears white, like silent static. Over the sound of it rushing through his ears he hears Ryan’s voice, flat and toneless. “Blue. It’s blue. Spence, you’re straight.”

*

“This can’t be happening,” Spencer says.

Brendon passes him another carton of ice cream. Sometimes Brendon can be a pretty good guy, and not just because he makes Ryan quietly, deliriously happy. He’s also reasonably good at things like this, at talking Jon off the metaphorical ledge when he’d heard the news and at convincing Spencer to sit tight while they made a plan because they would, there had to be a way, and at showing up with his arms loaded full of Rocky Road and Cherry Garcia.

“Don’t worry, people must have run into this before. It’s a fluke, there might have been a mix-up with the tests, or someone read the results wrong. It’s possible.” Ryan is the voice of reason, but Spencer privately thinks it’s because he knows there’s really nothing else to be done, and he just wants to keep Spencer calm so he doesn’t realize it and completely flip the fuck out. It’s possibly too late for that, but Spencer’s hysterics are all on the inside, so at least no one knows what a complete disaster he is right now. Except maybe Brendon, who trades ice cream cartons with him when he sees that Spencer has eaten all of the chocolate out of the Neapolitan.

“What if it’s not?” Spencer is trying to think positive, he really is. It’s just that the crushing weight of misery that presses on him when he thinks about the silence on Jon’s end of the com-link when Spencer called to tell him keeps overwhelming his intentions.

“It has to be,” Ryan says calmly. Spencer knows Ryan has been through this as well, or at least something like it. Ryan had been in a relationship with a woman until last year, steady and sincere and ready to commit, and then Brendon had waltzed in and turned his life upside down within a matter of days. Spencer doesn’t know if Ryan would have been tagged pink if he hadn’t met Brendon, although the government tells them the science of genetics doesn’t lie, so he most likely would have. He doesn’t know what Ryan would have done, but as it turned out it didn’t matter, because Ryan got tagged and committed, and Brendon happily claims full responsibility for all of it.

“Jon hasn’t called,” Spencer says, without ever really having any intention of saying it aloud. It’s true, though; Jon had accepted the news of Spencer’s apparent heterosexuality without any fuss, told him he’d call later and logged off. Spencer is still waiting for the com-link to beep.

“He will,” Ryan promises. Brendon hands him the carton of Java Chip.

*

It’s not that the system doesn’t make sense, or that there’s not a good reason for it. They live on a space station with a large number of people in a comparatively small amount of cubic feet, and not a lot of contact with the outside universe. If everyone dated freely as they wished, the station would be an incest pit with too many bitter exes and twisted relationships to function as a normal society. The rules are in place for a reason, and most of the time they aren’t a problem. Waiting to commit is a sensible choice, and the sexuality tagging is really just a precaution against later disaster.

That doesn’t stop Spencer from currently hating it with a burning passion.

“I can’t be straight,” he insists when Jon finally gives in and agrees to have lunch with him, out on the botanical garden deck of the station cafeteria. “I want to be with you, I want to spend my life with you, I want to _kiss_ you.”

Jon has been uncharacteristically quiet for most of the meal, which as a result has Spencer babbling like an idiot in an effort to fill the painfully awkward silences. Jon takes another bite of his grilled protein steak and says, “That doesn’t necessarily mean you want to suck my cock, though.”

Spencer’s throat gets clogged with the seaweed soup he’s trying to ingest. He could argue that there’s more to a relationship than sex, more to love than desire, but Jon already knows that and it’s not really an argument that would help his case. He can’t say that he _doesn’t_ want to suck Jon’s cock, it’s just that he never has, and how is he supposed to know in advance whether he’ll like fucking better with a man or a woman? And if he doesn’t know, how is a scientist looking at a screen supposed to be able to tell him?

Jon hugs him awkwardly after lunch and says he’ll call. Spencer isn’t sure whether to believe him.

*

“We’ve made you another appointment,” Ryan informs him on Saturday, after more than a week of moping around wanting Jon to call and not knowing what to say if he does. Spencer blinks, and Ryan continues on, putting the appointment card on Spencer’s desk and plugging it into his day calendar.

“You…” Spencer begins. He’s not sure that anything could make him feel worse at the moment, except for maybe another envelope with a little coloured square the exact same shade of blue telling him it wasn’t a fluke and he’s not anywhere near as in love with Jon as he’d previously thought. He doesn’t think he can do that to either of them.

“You’re within the five percent margin for error, which is grounds for appeal,” Ryan cuts him off. “But you can only appeal once, so this is it.” Ryan’s expression as serious as Spencer has ever seen it, even more than during the stilted conversation they’d had about Ryan’s future, two weeks after Brendon had exploded into their lives. “And you have to do it now, or your relationship with Jon is history, and then it will be too late.”

Spencer silently concedes the point, and tucks the card inside his jacket. “How did you get my records?” he asks, surprised because he hadn’t known what the margin for error was, or even that there was one, and certainly not that he was within it. “Isn’t that confidential?”

“I impersonated you,” Brendon tells him proudly, draped half-over Ryan and beaming. “The case reference number was on that paper they sent, along with your security information, so I just called and told them I was you and I wanted to take the test again.”

“He made up this shit about having watched porn right before and being in a distracted mood and influenced by the cultural media, and then followed it up with the word ‘lawsuit,” Ryan provides, with that look in his eyes that Spencer knows – and Brendon does, too, he’s sure – means he’s in love and he knows it. “They folded like cardboard cutouts.”

Spencer is impressed with Brendon’s powers of persuasion, but having seen them in action on his best friend, he’s not really all that surprised by the fact that they succeeded. He’d have been more surprised if the poor bureaucrat on the other end of Brendon’s com-call had actually been able to attempt any sort of argument. “Thanks,” he says to both of them, and means it.

Brendon transfers himself from Ryan to Spencer, gives him a hug and a big, sloppy kiss, and advises earnestly, “Think gay thoughts.”

*

The second time through isn’t as shocking as the first, although it’s longer, because it seems the appeal process means they have to be sure beyond a doubt of the results. Spencer goes in nervous and sweating, determined to respond only to gay stimuli and force his body and _brain_ , which is apparently the only part of him that matters, to cooperate.

He does okay, at least for the first five minutes, thinking, ‘women bad’ and ‘ew, breasts,’ even though they aren’t all that bad and he wouldn’t mind sucking on them, at least a nice set, but he can think those thoughts after he makes it out of here with a record so pink it’s garish.

Then he sees a photo of a guy who looks, not necessarily in appearance but in the way he stands, the crinkle at the corner of his eyes when he smiles, like Jon. It stops him in his tracks between holographs of porn stars, just the simple lines of it, and the desire he feels is so sudden and intense he has to bite his fingernails into the fabric covering his knee just to pull it together.

After that, he just thinks about Jon.

Jon’s lips, and how he smiles and purses them to blow kisses and how warm and dry they are on the rare occasion his mouth touches Spencer’s. Jon’s eyes, how warm and liquid and deep they are, forever understanding and patient and full of mischief you would never expect if you didn’t look for it. Jon’s bare feet, and the little bit of pudge at his stomach, and his hair when it’s ruffled and sticking every which way, and a thousand other things Spencer hadn’t thought to catalog before this moment in time, faced with the nameless body parts of a hundred other people he’ll never know.

He sees Jon in the line of a model’s shoulder, in the way a man’s fingers are wrapped around another’s arm, a cock, the strong, stable planes of a back, and he _wants_ so much that he’s dizzy from it, and irrevocably smitten. He wonders if it hit Ryan like this too, this overwhelming tsunami of desire and affection and love, and then thinks of Brendon and guesses it probably did.

*

“I can’t look.” Spencer buries his head in his arms and holds the envelope up hopefully. Brendon takes pity on him and plucks it from his fingers, ripping the paper open with gusto.

The silence following that is more than he can bear. “Does it…?” he asks, looking up with desperate eyes, only to see them watching him with smiles on their faces.

“Congratulations,” Ryan says with a hint of pride in his voice. “You’re getting committed.”

“I told you!” Brendon crows, waving the slip of paper like a banner. “I can turn anyone pink! My powers of sexual persuasion are unparalleled!”

Ryan cuffs him, but with affection, and whatever it was that changed the results, Brendon or no, Spencer is grateful for it. All of the tension goes out of his body in a rush, leaving him slumped weakly in his chair. “I’m getting committed,” he repeats, and then his brain rushes on past the tagging part, to everything else that will need to be done. “It’s not certain yet. We have to take the compatibility test, and pass the psych exams, and apply for a license, and…”

“Relax,” Ryan orders firmly. “Enjoy this part for now and worry about the rest of it later.”

“We should celebrate!” Brendon announces, arms raised and grinning. He looks ready to plunge into extravagant plans involving a lot of currency and mind-altering substances, but Ryan cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder.

“Spencer needs to be celebrating with someone else,” Ryan tells him, with a meaningful look at Spencer. Brendon’s enthusiasm is dimmed, but his happiness remains, and he bounces in place waiting for Spencer to make the call.

Spencer’s hand is already reaching for the com-link. Jon sounds muddled when he picks up, like he’d fallen asleep reading on his futon, his greeting warm and sleep-blurred. “Hello?”

“I want an egg-white omelet with soy cheese and spring onions, and potato cubes and real coffee, although I’ll understand if it has to be decaffeinated.” The words leave his mouth in a rush, and Spencer can only pray that Jon understands, that he still wants this, while he holds his breath and waits.

There’s silence on the other end for a while, and then Jon says, “Okay.”


End file.
